An Interview with Watts Humphrey, Part 7: The Director of Programming Role at IBM

In this transcript of an oral history, Grady Booch interviews SEI Fellow Watts Humphrey. In part 7, Humphrey discusses his role as Director of Programming at IBM, including how he got a handle on the volume of mail he received (a problem even in the 1960s), standing up to his boss, and introducing the concept of planning to the entire programming division at IBM.

From the author of

IBM Director of Programming

Somewhere in the fall
of '65, IBM was just starting to ship the Model 50,
and the head of research, Gardner Tucker, got a hold of me one day and said,
"Hey Watts I'd like you to write a white paper on how you think we ought
to manage programming." So I said, "Oh okay." And so I put one
together, and it was a tirade. I was really very concerned about the management
of programming and how it was done. It wasn’t business-like at all, and we
ought to have plans and go do this and that. We had plans for the TSS system,
the timesharing system, but we hadn't done the real planning for the
modifications, which was a failure on my part because of the market pressure. The
market pressure was realistic but I could have pushed them off to make a better
plan, and we did not do that. And that was a real failure on my part. But in
any event, I wrote this tirade and gave it to Gardner Tucker, and a little bit
later I got this call again from Learson. And I had
been promoted to Director of Programming. It turned out they had fired the
previous director.

Booch: Ominous sign.

Humphrey: Well, actually they
fired the guy for a reason that had nothing to do with management. He was
running around with his secretary. Nice guy, I knew him. He lived in Chappaqua,
he had 10 kids, and he was running around with his secretary. IBM had something
called an open door policy, and when somebody would write a letter to Tom
Watson, anybody in the company could contact Tom Watson or the Chairman. I
don't think they can still do it, but they certainly could then. And this young
manufacturing manager had written a letter to Tom Watson saying, "My wife
is the secretary working for this big executive who's
running programming, and she's running around with him and I can't compete with
your executives when they're running around with my wife. I'd like you to fix
that."

So Tom Watson had an
open door investigation and discovered that the guy was right on so they fired
the Director of Programming, bam. And he left and took the secretary with him,
divorced his wife and married his secretary. So he went off and was doing other
stuff. I won't tell you who he was. But I remember going and meeting with the
wife and that sort of thing. It was sad. But so I got the job and it was I'm
sure based on the white paper I wrote.

Booch: Do you remember what you said in
that paper? What kinds of suggestions, predictions?

Humphrey: Well, I would think
I wrote about the crucial need for planning and for an orderly structured
process to manage commitments and the whole nine yards. I did not have quality in the list at the time. We
didn't have enough perception then to do that, but I did really push on the
planning cycle and what you ought to do. So I was called in.I'm a little fuzzy on the order in which
these things happened. But I think the first one was a meeting with Vin Learson. I remember I arrived at my office in White Plains, the program director's
office, and I had two secretaries and an assistant and they were spending all
their time sorting my mail.

Booch: Physical mail of course back
then.

Humphrey: Physical mail. They
would make a daily mail summary. And the daily mail summary was a brief
paragraph on every document that I got from wherever I got it, and it ran to
about three or four pages. And I had a stack of about three feet of mail I got
every day. And they told me the previous director had taken all
this mail home every night and that's what he'd spend his time doing,
going through the mail. I said, "Well, let's do the following. I don't
want any mail unless it's from my boss, his boss all the way up to Tom Watson. Anybody
in that group writes directly to me, I don't want copies. If anybody writes
directly to me I want those letters right away, and any letters they write that
copy me, I want summaries of that stuff but nothing else."

And so all of sudden
I started to get no mail. So I had time to do stuff and I was able to deal with
the problems. I mean, the previous director was paralyzed with mail. I didn't
have time to screw around with that stuff and most of it was totally
uninteresting. And it was a lot of people writing to me and saying, "What
do I do next?" And so I said, "If you've really got problems like
that give me a ring." And so I would get those calls occasionally,
"What do I do about this or how do that?" I'd been in the job, like,
days. "That's your job you figure out what you ought to do next and then
come tell us if we need to know or tell your boss. I’m not going to tell you
what to do."

The Learson Commitment Meeting

Humphrey: And so I basically
got out of that loop right away. And Learson, I think
this was at the very beginning, called me in. It may have been the second week,
because I think the first day I did was go out and visit several labs the first
week. And I remember I met in a couple of the labs, first thing I'd ask is,
"What are your commitments?" And they didn't know. Honest to goodness
they knew that they had to deliver a bunch of things, they had a list of stuff
they had to deliver and they had dates and they were striving to do it. But
they were all basically blue letter stuff, what was announced. And the
marketing announcements were what was driving
everything they were all doing. No one had any plans to do anything. And I
said, I said, "Suppose you were going to do the job the right way. How
would you do it?" And so they'd describe a very logical approach. How
they'd do it if they had plans and requirements and they'd have schedules and
they'd do it all. I said, "Well, why don't you do it that way?" They
said, "We don't have time." I said, "That's insane. You're
saying you don't have the time to do it right, you’ve got more time to do it
wrong?"

And so they said,
"Well, yes." I said, you know, "That makes no sense." And I
left it at that, I had a couple of meetings like that
at great big labs. I remember one in San
Jose and a couple of others. And I went back thinking
about what the heck to do. Well, along about that time I also got a call from
Vin Learson to a meeting in my office in
Poughkeepsie.
I had an office in White Plains and another in Poughkeepsie.
And Learson had called a meeting for 8:00 am in my
office in Poughkeepsie,New York
with me and all my senior management. And so I showed up. I showed up a few
minutes late. He flew up by helicopter, the bum! So I drove there and I was
stuck in traffic and I got there about 10 minutes late, and he was in the
middle of a tirade. About 30 managers in this room sitting around the room and
he was really ranting about how, "You're killing the company. You're going
to destroy the business," and this sort of thing. And I walked in and was
sort of sitting watching all this stuff and what had happened was the
programming schedule had slipped about three times.

They were starting to
deliver hardware. No one had any idea when the software would come and no one
believed it. The marketing force was in an uproar. The customers were upset,
and no one wanted to buy anything anymore. The market had kind of really
frozen. What's interesting was we were selling the TSS Model 67, however,
because people believed that. So, Learson finished
his tirade and slammed his fist on the table. Learson,
by the way, was six foot four, a great big guy, very powerful, one of the most
intuitive, you know, really understood stuff. He was a brilliant man. But boy
he really hammered on that table. And he then said, "God damn it, I've got
to have a schedule in two weeks."

And so he looked
around the room and everybody looked at me. I had had the job less than a week
or maybe two weeks and I was supposed to make up a schedule. And so I looked at
him and I said, "Vin," because I knew him pretty well at this point,
"I said I can give you a schedule today if you want it but then I'll give
you another one tomorrow." I said, "If you want a schedule we're
going to meet, it will take 60 days." Then he started around the room one
by one asking the managers, "What do you think?" And he went to every
manager around the whole room and everyone of them
said, "Yep, 60 days." And then he turned to me and he said,
"Okay God damn it," and he slammed his fist on the table and he
stormed out the door. I was the hero.

Booch: That's great. You were saying
the things that no one had the guts to say.

Humphrey: No one had ever said
it before. I knew Vin well enough to be able to do
that because I knew it was crazy. I mean, some of these labs were in France and England and there was no way in the
world I was going to be able to even speak to them all in two weeks. So getting
schedules was a hell of a job. And so all of a sudden from being a bum I became
a hero. And I'm convinced Learson did it on purpose.

It was a shoot out. I
was the enemy. Now remember the TSS Model 67 was the enemy to the 360. So I was
in charge of the timesharing group and that was the competitor to the 360. And
so I was the enemy brought in to run 360 programming, and Learson
had to make me a hero. And he knew how to do it. When I was Director of Systems
and Applications Engineering, Learson used to ask me
to meetings in his office. And I'd go listen to the meetings and I had no idea
what was going on at the meeting or why I was even there.

The meeting would end
and the guys would walk out and Learson would look at
me and say, "Well what do they want?" And I'd say, "Well, I
don't know, here's what they said they wanted." And he said, "That
isn't what they want." He said, "Here's what they want." So he
could see through all this stuff, just extraordinary. I remember once he was
really beating us up because we were trying to get more systems engineering in
the field, system engineers (I was Director of Systems Engineering as well as
Programming). And I'd go in there with a story on why we needed more, and every
time I did he'd have some facts and data -- I don't know where the hell he got
it -- but he knew more about it than I did. And so he was always ahead of me. So
I talked to my guys about this and so they were really searching around, and one of them one day they came to me and said,
"Boss I got it. Here's a guy who used to work for Learson.
He's in a basement office for a group in marketing, and he handles all the
records and all the data and stuff, and he goes way back knows all this stuff. He's
an old friend of Learson's." He said, "I
think he's feeding Learson all this stuff."

Booch: He's your mole.

Humphrey: Yeah. I said,
"Oh, okay. Let's go see him.” So we called up and went over and chatted
with him. I told him our proposal and why and went through the whole thing with
him and explained to him what we thought, and he bought it. He thought it made
a lot of sense. I said, "Okay, thank you." So I went back and next
time I went to Learson, I said, "By the way I
chatted with so and so and here's what he said." Learson
just smiled, and when we finished the discussion he bought it. So, he was real
sharp. That's what he wanted to know, could I get there, and so we were able to
do that. But he was an amazing guy.

So, I was Director of
Programming and what I figured out was the problem the guys were having with
not doing it right was that they didn't have any choice. And it wasn't really
their problem, it was mine. The reason they weren't doing the job right was
that when all they had to do to deliver programs they only had to do two things
and what would those be? Code and test -- right?

Booch: Right.

Just Coding and Testing

Humphrey: That's all they were
doing. And they had this enormous list of stuff they had to do. But there were
only two items that were essential to ship product right now, and they had one
problem which was to ship product. And as a consequence, if I let them ship
product by just coding and testing, then that's all they had time to do. There
wasn't time for anything else. So I realized that my problem was I didn't have
an appropriate set of requirements on what they had to do to deliver products. So
I went to Frank Cary, who was then Group Executive over all the development.
And I said, "Frank, here's the problem we've got, and if we're going to
fix it we have got to plan. And so I was going to stop everything. And to make
sure we get plans for everything before we re-announce. I want to open all the
schedules and tell the marketing organization we will get back with schedules
in 60 days." And so he bought it.

And so I did. I sent
out a wire to everybody to that effect. Now, the engineers could keep writing
programs and testing all they wanted. But we weren't going to announce
anything. We weren't going to ship anything. We weren't going to do anything,
not going to start any programs. I wouldn't even fund anything unless I had a
plan on my desk and they had to get back to me within 60 days, and they had to
review it with me, all the important plans. I couldn't look at all the details.
But every important plan they had to review with me personally,
and I wanted to make sure it was signed off by everybody who had got to work on
it. I didn't want them making plans for somebody else
if they didn't agree.

And so I put that
directive out and it made a hell of an impact, I'll tell you, worldwide. And so
people started planning. And we had to get the manufacturing planning people --
I got agreement for them to go sit with the programming guys and show them what
plans were. And they'd be consultants for them on planning. So the
manufacturing community was extremely helpful in going in and showing these
guys what a plan is. They didn’t know. And so we got damn good plans and I
reviewed them all. They'd come in, and as I'd go through their review I'd say,
"Look first of all I want a plan you're going to meet." Here all of a
sudden I turned my hat completely around, because before we were pushing to get
this thing going. But I told them, "Look, the prior director was fired."
They didn't know why but I did. I said, "The prior director was fired and
I don't want to be fired." I said, "If you miss a schedule you may be
embarrassed, I could get canned." I'm not going to get canned, so I want
schedules you're going to meet. And so they'd go through their plans and I'd
poke at them. Get them to demonstrate that they could do it, that everybody
agreed with this stuff. Have you got enough resources? What's your timing? I
didn't cut a single schedule. I lengthened some of them. And I also put a 90
day cushion on every one.

Booch: Would it be fair to say that
this was the most serious planning this group had ever really done? So this was
novel to them.

Meeting the Plan

Humphrey: They had never made
a plan. They didn't know what plans were. We put together a course. I got Al Pietrasonta to move up from the Federal Systems Division to
put it together. I'm not sure if it was
a one week or a two week course on planning. And in the next several years we
put 1,000 managers through planning training. We had people from marketing and
other places, but we put everybody through it. It was a marvelous course. Al did
a great job. He died early a number of years ago and I dedicated one of my
books to him, I don't know if you knew him. But in any event, I talked to every
class. I'd go talk on Friday afternoon. And so it was something. So these guys
put these plans together and they met them. We didn’t miss a date for 2-1/2
years. Isn't that incredible?

Booch: That is amazing. How much of
that 90-day cushion did you end up eating over time though?

Humphrey: Well let me come
back to that. First of all, Frank Cary, when he agreed that I could stop
everything and do this and open all the schedules and everything, he said,
"You're going to have to go out and give a presentation on exactly what it
is we're doing for the marketing Hundred Percent Clubs. There were four Hundred
Percent Clubs. Those were all the top salesmen in the company. It'd be about 3
or 4,000 people in these club meetings. And so he said, "You're going to
have to go give them a talk and tell them what we're doing." I said,
"Okay." So I put together a one hour talk, and I walked through what
we were doing. I said, "Here are the problems, here's exactly what we're
doing." We had performance problems, schedule problems, all kinds of
stuff. And so I laid that out, and then I laid out
here's what we're doing about it. And so I went out and went to these Hundred
Percent Club meetings, and told them,"One, we're
opening all the schedules, we're going to have plans in 60 days, and here's
what we're doing." So I went through, I described the performance problems
and the measurement system we were putting in place for measuring performance
and all the other stuff. It was a pretty damn good talk. I gave it four times,
and I later had a number of marketing people, one was Mike Armstrong. You know
who Mike Armstrong is?

Booch: The name is familiar to me, but I
really know nothing about him. Tell me.

Humphrey: He was a neighbor
when I lived in Darien
[CT] and he was a top IBM executive. He left IBM in some reorganization. He
didn't get moved up when somebody else did. So he left and became president of
Hughes Aircraft for awhile, and then he moved from there to become CEO of
AT&T, the old AT&T. And he was the guy who ran
that, and actually they ran into some real problems, but nonetheless, he was a
very good guy, marvelous boss. But he sort of got trapped by the technologists.
But in any event, he told me when I met with him later at IBM he'd been one of
the salesmen in the crowd, and he told me, "For the first time we had
something we could sell." So my Hundred Percent Club talk basically turned
the marketing team around. They said, "Now we got something we can
believe." And so they went back, and they did turn the market around and
it was that they believed me, there was confidence. And although I hadn't told
them what the schedules were, we opened everything. The teams did come back and
we got the plans within 60 days. The 90-day cushion I had put on, the teams all
said, "No, we recognize your 90 days, but we'll meet our schedule and we'll
stick with it." And the first couple of releases were 90 days early. And
all of a sudden the whole marketing complexion changed, I mean all of a sudden
these guys were delivering ahead of schedule, and what a difference it made. And
so they could sell it. It also completely changed the dynamics of the debates I
had with marketing, because people now believed me. I didn't have to fight
anybody if I said it was going to take another year or six months or whatever.
They didn't argue with me.